Scheler’s Ordo Amoris: Insights and Oversights

Philip Blosser

[First presented as a paper at the Third International Symposium of the Max Scheler Gesellschaft, in Jena,
Germany, May 22-24, 1997, and subsequently published in Denken des Ursprungs/Ursprungs des Denkens:
Schelers Philosophie und ihre Anfänge in Jena, ed. Christian Bermes, et al. Kritisches Jahrbuch der
Philosophie 3 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1998), pp.160-171.]

In this paper I want to argue that Scheler’s idea of the ordo amoris, a Pascalian idea of an
order independent of rationality and logic, provides an invaluable defense against various
reductionist tendencies in the history of ideas, but that certain elements of the idea were
not sufficiently worked out so as to achieve adequate clarity, either in terms of the
analysis of subjective faculties1 of value-apprehension (various feeling-states, functions,
and acts), or in terms of the analysis of objective interrelationships among various kinds
of values. Readily recognizing the controversial nature of some of the questions I shall be
raising, I submit them respectfully for your consideration, to solicit your assistance in the
ongoing task of clarifying the nature of Scheler’s contribution to our understanding.
Specifically, I want to defend three theses:
First, in his phenomenology of the objective contents of consciousness, Scheler
counters the reductionistic absolutism of logic,2 logicism and certain species of what
would today be called “logocentrism,” by means of his Pascalian apologetic for the
existence of an objective order of value-phenomena that is completely independent of
logic, but his grouping of all material values under the heading of objects of “nonlogical
feeling” does not adequately account for their manifold diversity, or for the relationship
between the logical and nonlogical regions of value-experience, or for the fact that logical
relationships are themselves a species of “value-phenomena.”
Second, in his phenomenology of the subjective modes of consciousness, Scheler
effectively counters the absolutism of reason3 by his brilliant apologetic for subjective
faculties of normative value-awareness that are independent of reason (various passive
and active intentionalities, preferences, feelings, etc.), but his unqualified grouping of
these faculties together under the psychical configuration of “emotions” or “feelings,”
defined in opposition to rational understanding, itself verges towards a possible
reductionism and does not adequately account for the variety of subjective modalities of

1 By “faculties” here I do not mean anything pertaining to the natural scientific attitude, such as the
empirical “faculty psychology” that can be traced from Tetens through Kant, but the various kinds of
feeling states, feeling-functions, passive and active intentionalities, preferences, loves and hates, that can be
found in Scheler’s phenomenological analysis of the subjective side of the ordo amoris.
2 I use “logic” to refer to the objective analytical structures dealt with by logicians, the objective contents of
consciousness constituting the material region of the science of logic and conceptual analysis. By contrast,
I use “reason” or “rational understanding” to refer to the subjective faculties, intentions, and acts by which
logical structures are apprehended and analyzed.
3 See previous note.

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value-experience, including the feeling for values he ordinarily seems to exclude from the
ordo amoris—including the feelings for mathematical and logical values.
Third, in his phenomenology of moral experience, Scheler argues compellingly for a
teleological ethical theory according to which the value of the “good” appears only as a
by-product of willing or realizing the existence of other material values, but his analysis
is compromised by the fact that not every value of “good” is strictly a moral value, as he
suggests, which implies that moral good is a species of “good” corresponding to a
material region of experience whose value-content can be (contra Scheler) the object of
willing and realization.
I will begin with some historical remarks on the background of Scheler’s concept of
the ordo amoris, a brief analysis of some central features of the concept, and then proceed
to build my case for the first two theses together, returning finally to the third and last
thesis.
Scheler’s earliest scholarly productions from his pre-phenomenological period in
Jena already exhibit his keen interest in circumscribing and defining the material regions
of logic and ethics as each having their own autonomous, irreducible principles. This is
evident in his dissertation of 1897, which reveals his immersion in problems of
distinguishing and delineating the realms of logical and ethical principles, as well as in
his Habilitationsschrift of 1899, which reveals his interest in questions of ethics,
particularly in relation to labor, and his growing dissatisfaction with transcendental and
psychological methods of approaching these issues.4 Much of the thetical framework of
his thinking in this period would be later abandoned—such as his Kantianism, embraced
tentatively under the tutelage of his Neo-Kantian professor at Jena, Otto Liebmann,
among others, and the “noological method” of his mentor, Rudolf Eucken, which Scheler
temporarily regarded as a possible alternative to the transcendental and psychological
approaches.5 But if these earlier writings reveal the influence of Kantian
“constructivism” (which persisted as late as ca. 1906 in his unpublished manuscript,
Logik I), as well as of Eucken’s philosophy, they also reveal a growing dissatisfaction
with—and gradual emancipation from—these influences, along with increasingly
independent strategies for defending the autonomy of ethical and logical principles
against the reductionistic tendencies of psychologism and naturalism.6 All of these

4 Scheler’s dissertation (1897), written under Rudolf Eucken at Jena, is entitled “Beiträge zur Fesstellung
der Beziehungen zwischen den logischen und ethischen Prinzipien.” His Habilitationsschrift (1899) is
entitled “Die transzendentale und die psychologische Methode: Eine grundsätzliche Erörterung zur
philosophischen Methodik.” Both can be found in: Scheler, GW, I.
5 It is significant that one of Scheler’s professors at Jena was Otto Libemann, whose Kant und die Epigonen
(1865) and famous motto “Back to Kant” eventually earned him the title, “Father of Neo-Kantianism,” and
that Scheler wrote his dissertation under Rudolf Eucken. See Herbert Spiegelbert, The Phenomenological
Movement, Phaenomenologica, No. 5, The Hague, 1976 2, I, p. 235; and also Harold J. Bershady’s
“Introduction” to his edition of selected writings by Max Scheler, On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing,
Chicago, 1992, pp. 6ff.
6 The reference to Kantian “constructivism” is found throughout Scheler’s discussions of Kant (esp. in:
Formalismus), but is also attributed to the earlier Scheler by Moritz Geiger (“Zu Max Schelers Tode,” in:
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factors converge to suggest the inevitability of Scheler’s phenomenological turn and of

his particular intensity of interest in the issues surrounding the ordo amoris.
As David Lachterman has said, “It would not be a complete exaggeration to say that
the subject of ‘ordo amoris’ was always the leitmotif of Scheler’s thinking.”7 Despite the
many traceable shifts in his writings, he never wavered in his fundamental position that
“Man, before he is an ens cogitans or an ens volens, is an ens amans.”8 The conviction
that love serves as the animating principle of all knowing and willing is to be found
throughout Scheler’s writings, most substantially in Formalismus (1913-16) and in his
important essay, “Ordo Amoris” (1916) in which he elaborated upon a key underlying
tenet of Formalismus—that there exists an order of cognitive emotional intentionality,
independent of reason, through which values are apprehended a priori. The essay “Ordo
Amoris” remained an unfinished fragment, and Scheler’s thinking on the ordo amoris is
nowhere developed in a systematic treatise, yet the outlines of his thinking are self-
evident, and I shall not rehearse them in detail here.

The first thing to be noted about the ordo amoris is that it is two-sided, both
subjective and objective. In the words of Roger Funk, “It is both the source of all that
proceeds from a person in the form of his loves and hates and at the same time a
microcosm of the a priori order of values.”9 Thus Manfred Frings can refer to it as a
person’s “emotive attunement” or “structured counterpart” of the objective world of
values, and Scheler himself can say that such values “represent the objective side of [the]
ordo amoris.”10 This duality is further underlined by Scheler’s distinction between the

Vossische Zeitung, June 1, 1928, quoted in Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, p. 236), and
refers generally to the Kantian notion of a law-giving, order-conferring, structure-imposing transcendental
subject. Neo-Kantians such as Hermann Cohen regarded logic as generating its own content as well as
forms, and Scheler’s early view of logic was not dissimilar, as can be seen from his unfinished manuscript
on logic (ca. 1906) where he opposes Lotze’s and Husserl’s view of “correspondence” to an “objective truth
in itself,” insisting that, rather, thought generates its own truth (Max Scheler, Logik, I, Elementa, 3, ed. by
R. Berlinger and W. Schrader, Atlantic Highlands, 1975, pp. 140-165). Scheler later wrote that he held
back publication of this manuscript because he became dissatisfied with Kantian philosophy (Scheler,
“Deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart,” in: Deutsches Leben der Gegenwart, ed. by P. Witkop, Berlin,
1922, pp. 197-198). Even so, one finds in this manuscript a noteworthy defense of the autonomy of logical
thinking over against the reductionistic tendencies of the psychologism and naturalism so prevalent at the
end of the nineteenth century, corresponding to his defense elsewhere of the autonomy of ethics and value-
feeling.
7 David R. Lachterman, “Translator’s Introduction,” in: Max Scheler, Selected Philosophical Essays, trans.
by D.R. Lachterman, Evanston, 1973, p. xxxi.
8 Max Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” in: GW, X, 356; English translation by David R. Lachterman entitled,
“Ordo Amoris,” in: Max Scheler, Philosophical Essays, op. cit., pp. 110-111.
9 Roger L. Funk, “Thought, Values, and Action,” in: M.S. Frings, ed., Max Scheler (1874-1928):
Centennial Essays, The Hague, 1974, p. 51.
10 Manfred S. Frings, “The ‘Ordo Amoris’ in: Max Scheler: Its Relationship to his Value Ethics and to the
Concept of Resentment,” in: F.J. Smith and Erling Eng, eds., Facets of Eros, The Hague, 1972, p. 43; and
Scheler, GW, X, 348/English: Philosophical Essays, op. cit., p. 100.
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“normative” and “descriptive” senses of the ordo amoris, together with his claim that this
ordo can be exemplified in a person in either an “objectively correct” or “disordered”
way.11 There are thus two sides—subjective and objective. Sometimes, the reference
(“ordo amoris”) may be to subjective structures of the person, to faculties of value-
awareness, various intentionalities, feelings, preferences, and the like; and at other times
the reference may be to objective values or corresponding regions of activity in which a
person may be involved, such as the religious, the aesthetic, the social, etc. But both
sides are represented in the ordo amoris.
This two-sidedness of the ordo amoris can sometimes give rise to some confusion,
since it is not always clear to which side of the ordo amoris Scheler is referring, or
whether he is referring inclusively to the entire bi-polar complex as a whole. For
example, when he contrasts the order of the “heart” with the order of “logic,” or when he
refers to the “a priori” in connection with “feelings” or the “emotions,” one could be
confused as to whether he is referring to the apprehended values on the objective side, or
to the apprehending faculty of intentional feelings on the subjective side. Of course the
two sides are reciprocally interrelated by way of mutual entailment, and this is precisely
the source of this particular ambiguity, which is nothing more than a problem of clarity.
Another question that pertains to this two-sidedness is the one concerning the
location of the ordering principle of the ordo amoris. The question is: what is the location
of the ordering principle—that which provides lawfulness and structure in human
experience? There is no question where the accent falls for Scheler. In contrast to Kant,
for whom the ordering principle of experience resides in the law-giving rational subject,
Scheler stressed that human experience exhibits a lawfulness that is given objectively and
independently of human organization. In contrast to the constructivistic rationalism of
Kant, according to which the fundamental principle of lawfulness in human experience is
that conferred upon it by the rational subject, Scheler stressed that this lawfulness is given
objectively in the essential structures of experience itself.12 If the ordering principle of
experience resides for Kant in the subjective faculty of reason, and for Scheler in the
objective eidetic forms of experience, the question that remains concerns the relation of
the subjective faculties to the objectively given. For Kant, according to Scheler, only “a
disordered chaos” of sensations and inclinations is given; so the relationship of reason to
the given data of experience is unilaterally that of an order-imposing, structuring law-
giving faculty.13
For Scheler, on the other hand, the correlation is not simply unilateral. The objective
order of values is mirrored in the ordo amoris. As Funk says, “the heart is not chaotic,

11 Scheler, GW, X, 347-348, 350-351/English: Philosophical Essays, op. cit., pp. 98-99, 103; Scheler’s
essay on “Ressentiment” may be properly regarded as a case study of a “désordre du coeur.”
12 Scheler does not speculate on the ultimate source of these objectively given structures. In discussing the
“normative” meaning of the ordo amoris, he notes that it “does not depend on the thesis that God exists”
(GW, X, 347, n. 1/English: Philosophical Essays, op. cit., p. 99, n. 3).
13 Max Scheler, GW, II, 86; English translation by M.S. Frings and R.L. Funk entitled Formalism in Ethics
and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, Evanston, 1973, p. 66.
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but rather is an ordered counterpart of the realm of values.”14 Scheler’s view is not
simply the opposite of Kant’s. The heart, on the subjective side, does not present us with
a “disordered chaos” upon which order is imposed by objective values. As Scheler says,
“The heart possesses a strict analogue of logic in its own domain that it does not borrow
from the logic of the understanding”; and then he adds: “laws are inscribed on it”
(emphasis mine). Again, he says, “the emphasis in Pascal’s saying lies on the ‘ses’ and
‘raisons.’ The heart has its reasons, ‘its,’ of which the understanding knows nothing and
can never know anything ....”15 No matter how the objective order of values is refracted
or distorted by the lens of a person’s ordo amoris, the heart is for Scheler something
normatively ordered. As he says, “laws are inscribed on it.” It is not essentially chaotic.
Even its disorders are therefore not inscrutable, but fundamentally intelligible, as he
shows in his analysis of Ressentiment. Not only the objective order of values, but the
subjective faculties which apprehend them, have an inherent structured lawfulness.
Unlike “sensibility” in Kant, whose data are unintelligible in themselves, the faculty of
value-feeling in Scheler is capable of grasping the a priori order and ranks among values.
Like Kant’s “reason,” Scheler’s “value-feeling” is a guiding, norm-adducing faculty
which illuminates our experience. In fact, the objective order of ranks of values is given
only in subjective acts of preference.
Still, there is no question that, for Scheler, the ordering principle lies finally in the a
priori order of values mirrored in the objective side of the ordo amoris, which constitute
the final criteria for determining what he calls the “correct ordo amoris”—the objective
correctness of one’s value-feelings, preferences, loves and hates. His rejection of Kantian
“constructivism” is overt and decisive.
This brings me to the issue that I think is the first real problem with the ordo amoris.
It is a problem that manifests itself in a certain ambiguity, which is related not only to its
two-sidedness, but to the way in which Scheler understands the relationship between the
rational and the non-rational, the logical and the non-logical. It is an ambiguity that
pertains to the scope of the ordo amoris. By its “scope,” what I mean is its extent: What
does it include and exclude? Which dimensions of experience? Which kinds of
subjective acts and objective facts? The most immediate answer, based on Scheler’s
Pascalian analogies, would be that it includes feelings and values, and excludes reason
and logic.16 After all, Scheler says that the heart “does not borrow from the logic of the
understanding,” and that it’s “reasons” are “objective and evident insights into matters to
which every understanding is blind—as ‘blind’ as a blind man is to color or a deaf man is
to tone.”17 This clearly suggests that the ordo amoris excludes reason and logic, and
includes the whole material region of ranked material values, as well as the whole range
of affective faculties by which these values are emotionally felt and apprehended.

14 Funk, “Thought, Values, and Action,” op. cit., p. 52.

15 Scheler, GW, X, 362/English:Philosophical Essays, op. cit., p. 117.
16 See note 2, above.
17 Scheler, GW, X, 362/English: Philosophical Essays, op. cit., p. 117.
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However, when we examine Scheler’s analysis of the objective ranks of values and their
corresponding stratification of emotional experiences, some complications begin to
emerge.
Scheler’s basic grouping of material values into four ranked modalities,
corresponding to their respective emotional intentionalities, is well-known. Ranked from
highest to lowest, these include: (1) religious values, such as the “sacred” and “profane”;
(2) spiritual (geistige) values, such as the “beautiful,” “right,” and “true”; (3) vital values,
such as the “noble” and “common”; and (4) sensory values, such as the “pleasant” and
“painful.” (Professor Frings discerns a fifth modality of “pragmatic” values, such as the
“useful” and “useless,” between Scheler’s third and fourth rank, though admitting Scheler
did not assign them a separate rank.)18 These modalities and their corresponding
feelings—organized by Scheler into slightly varying schemes of classification—comprise
the basic bi-polar structure of the ordo amoris.19
The first thing to be noted here is that among the “spiritual” values and feelings
discussed by Scheler are aesthetic, juridical, and philosophic values. And from the
context of his discussion of these, one learns that there are various “consecutive” values
phenomenally related to them, by way of dependence, for their being as values. He says,
for example, that “values of science” are consecutive values of the philosophic values of
the “pure cognition of truth,” that “cultural values” are consecutive values of the spiritual
values of the value-sphere of goods (art treasures, scientific institutions, positive
legislation, etc.), and that legal values are consecutive values of the juridical values of the
order of right (Rechtsordnung).20 This suggests that beyond his basic ranking of four (or
five) modalities of values, there are a whole range of variously interrelated values and
corresponding feelings, including aesthetic, juridical, legal, philosophic, and scientific
values, and possibly many others.

18 Manfred S. Frings, The Mind of Max Scheler, Milwaukee, 1997, p. 28.

19 Scheler offers two different classifications of feelings in Formalismus, ch. 5—the first in sec. 2 (GW, II,
269-275/English: Formalism, op. cit., pp. 255-261), the second in sec. 8 (GW, II, 344-356/English:
Formalism, op. cit., pp. 332-344). The first distinguishes feeling-states, affects, reactive responses,
intentional feeling-functions, acts of preference, and love and hate. The second distinguishes sensible, vital,
psychic, and spiritual levels of emotion. According to Quentin Smith, these are based on different implicit
criteria, the first on distance of object-relatedness, the second on depth of ego-relatedness (Quentin Smith,
“Max Scheler and the Classification of Feelings,” in: Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 9, Nos. 1 &
2 [Fall, 1978], pp. 114-138, and “Scheler’s Stratification of Emotional Life and Strawson’s Person,” in:
Philosophical Studies 25 [1977], pp. 103-127).
There are also terminological discrepancies between Scheler’s ranking of values in Formalism, ch. 2,
B, sec. 5 (GW, II, 125-130/English: Formalism, op. cit., pp. 104-109), and his listing of corresponding
emotional strata in ch. 5, sec. 8 (GW, II, 345-356/English: Formalism, op. cit., pp. 333-343). In the former,
he distinguishes religions, spiritual, vital, and sensible value modalities; in the latter, spiritual, psychic, vital
and sensible emotional strata. I briefly touch on these discrepancies, as well as on his contradictory
accounts of whether “spiritual” feelings can be feeling-states, elsewhere (Philip Blosser, Scheler’s Critique
of Kant’s Ethics, Athens, 1995, p. 122, n. 29).
20 Scheler, GW, II, 128-129/English: Formalism, op. cit., pp. 107-108.
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Scheler’s discussion of this cluster of spiritual values raises what I think are some
interesting questions about the scope of the ordo amoris. Particularly, his reference to
“philosophic” and “scientific” values is provocative: one cannot help asking what,
precisely, the relationship is between these values and the “logic of the understanding” or
“logic of reason” to which the ordo amoris is supposed to have its own analogue. How,
for example, is “the value of the cognition of truth” related to the value of the cognition
of logical validity or cogency—if one may be permitted to speak in this way—or to the
value of rational understanding? Is it permissible to speak of “logical values”? And if so,
what becomes of the Pascalian analogy between the logic of the understanding and the
logic of the heart? Are there any limits to the number of material regions to which the
concept of “values” can be assigned? Excluding for the moment all “consecutive” values,
is there any reason why we could not properly distinguish, in addition to Scheler’s
particular set of values (religious, aesthetic, juridical, vital, sensible, etc.), also such
irreducible regions of values such as the economic, linguistic, social, historical, psychical,
biotic, physical, spatial—and even—the numerical and the logical?21 Is it permissible to
speak of the “numerical values” of a mathematical equation? Or of the “logical values”
of a propositional calculus?
Furthermore, if there is nothing ultimately against this, then is there any reason why
we may not properly differentiate also between corresponding affective faculties of value-
awareness by which these values are felt and apprehended? There are, after all, numerous
analogies to emotional feeling in other material regions besides the properly psychical.22
If one can speak of a psychologist’s emotional sensitivity and empathy for other people’s
feelings, there are also numerous analogies to such feelings outside the region proper to
psychology. For example, one may speak of a “sensitive conscience” in the moral sphere,
of a keen “sense for business” in the economic sphere, of an “aesthetic sense” in the
artistic sphere, of a “sense of fairness” in the juridical sphere, etc. Indeed, one may even
speak of a “feeling for mathematics” or a “feeling for logic”! Yet none of these analogies
of psychical feeling is exactly identical. Each has an irreducibly distinct and modally
qualified character that cannot be subsumed without loss of meaning under the heading,
merely, of what we ordinarily mean by “psychical” or “emotional” feeling.
But in this case, what becomes of the Pascalian analogy? Is the “logic of the heart” a
singular, distinct type of “logic,” or are there as many “logics” as there are material
regions of values? Are there irreducible principles proper to each region and its
respective discipline (such as aesthetics, economics, or linguistics), and could these be

21 Cf. the fifteen-tiered scale of modal values in: Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical
Thought, trans. by David H. Freeman et al., Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1953-19561; Jordan Station,
Ontario, 19842, I, p. 3; cf. vol. II, entitled The General Theory of Modal Spheres, passim.
22 While Dooyeweerd insists on the irreducibility of the “nuclear meaning” of distinct modalities of
experience, he points out the existence of modal interlacements in concrete experience, which he calls
modal “analogies” or “anticipations” and “retrocipations” of meaning. For example, while feeling is
typically qualified by its psychic “nuclear meaning,” it has “analogies” in other modalities of experience,
such as the aesthetic, religious, moral, etc. Accordingly, one can speak of “aesthetic feeling,” “religious
feeling,” “moral feeling,” etc. (Dooyeweerd, New Critique, II, op. cit., pp. 74-78).
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called, analogously, the “logics” of these respective regions? Are there correspondingly
diverse, irreducible faculties of value-awareness, even if they all bear within them an
analogy of “feeling”? If logic can be said to constitute a material region of objects of
value-feeling, then what warrant remains for excluding the logic of understanding from
the scope of the ordo amoris? The question is wrenching, yet necessary. Does there
remain a basis for Scheler’s Pascalian contention that this ordo has its “reasons”—its own
distinct insights into matters to which reason remains as “blind” as a blind man is to
color? I believe so. I think Scheler’s insight is fundamentally sound. Yet I also think
that the kinds of questions that I have raised call for clarifications without which
Scheler’s basic insights cannot be adequately appreciated and must remain
incommensurate with certain facets of the eidetic structure of phenomenological acts and
facts. It may be particularly helpful to illustrate this point by reflecting momentarily on
the “reason” to which the “heart” is supposed to serve as a Pascalian analogy.
The basic acts of logical reasoning, which have logic as their proper domain, are
analytical. They involve the making of analytical distinctions. But not all distinctions we
make are essentially logical or logically analytical. Just as we can speak of analogies of
psychical feelings in other material regions of experience (such as “aesthetic sense,”
“business sense,” “a feeling for mathematics,” etc.), so we can speak of analogies of
analytical distinguishing. Thus, we make not only logical distinctions. We also make
aesthetic, mathematical, social, historical, linguistic, juridical, moral, religious—and even
psychical or emotional distinctions. Yet not one of these distinctions is essentially logical
or syllogistic. For example, an aesthetic distinction as to what colors are “fitting” or
“harmonious” involves an intricate interplay between aesthetic analogies of psychical
feeling and aesthetic analogies of logical analysis. But it cannot be reduced to a purely
logical distinction any more than “aesthetic feeling” can be reduced to a strictly psychical
or emotional feeling. Rather, it is a type of distinguishing specific to the modality of
aesthetic value-awareness.
This brings me to my first two theses:
First, on the objective side, Scheler counters the reductionistic absolutism of logic by
means of a Pascalian apologetic for the existence of an objective order of value-
phenomena that is completely independent of logic, but his grouping of all material
values under the heading of objects of “nonlogical feeling” does not adequately account
for the relationship between the logical and nonlogical regions of value-experience, or for
the fact that logical relationships are themselves a species of value-phenomena. Scheler
correctly discerns the existence of material values that are distinct from logical values,
but what distinguishes the former is not merely their independence from logic as objects
of “nonlogical feeling,” but their irreducible differences from one another as objects of
awareness specific to their respective modalities of experience—e.g., aesthetic, social,
religious, lingual, as well as emotional experience.
Scheler’s chief insight, with respect to the objective side of the ordo amoris, is his
discernment of irreducibly non-logical modalities of values. His chief oversight lies in
his reinvocation of the traditional dualism between a realm of sensibility and thought,
now characterized in terms of a distinction between “logic” as the object of rational
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understanding, and “values” as the objects of feeling. This prevents him from adequately
accounting for the relationship between logical and non-logical values. Accordingly, the
Finnish philosopher Tapio Puolimatka, currently at the University of Notre Dame, accepts
Scheler’s claim that axiological principles are not mere “applications” of logical
principles to values, but rejects Scheler’s thesis that axiological principles are wholly
independent of logical ones, as too extreme.23 These material regions are not
hermetically sealed compartments, even if they are in themselves irreducible to one
another, but interrelated realms of experience. This oversight also prevents Scheler from
an adequate accounting of the interrelationship, as well as the irreducible differences
between, non-logical values. The threat of reductionism comes not only from the
direction of logic (in the form of logicism), but from the direction of material regions
assigned by Scheler to the ordo amoris as well, such as the psychical, aesthetic, and
vital—in the form of psychologism, aestheticism, vitalism, and the like. So it is just as
important to prevent the absolutism of the psychical, aesthetic, or the vital, as it is to
prevent the absolutism of logic.
Second, on the subjective side, Scheler effectively counters the absolutism of reason
by his brilliant apologetic for subjective faculties of normative value-awareness that are
independent of reasoning (various passive and active intentionalities, preferences,
feelings, etc.), but his unqualified grouping of these faculties together under the psychical
configuration of “emotions” or “feelings,” defined in opposition to rational
understanding, itself verges towards a kind of reductionism of “sensibility,” and does not
adequately account for the variety of subjective modalities of value-experience, including
the feeling for values he ordinarily seems to exclude from the ordo amoris—including the
feelings for mathematical and logical values, etc. While our various faculties of value-
awareness involve analogies of the psychical modality of experience in that they are all in
some sense “perceptive,” just as they involve analogies of the capacity to form analytical
distinctions, it would be no more appropriate to reduce all value-awareness to psychical
feeling than to reduce every capacity for making distinctions to the activity of rational
analysis.
Scheler’s chief insight, with respect to the subjective side of the ordo amoris, is his
discernment of irreducibly non-rational modalities of value-experience. His chief
oversight lies in the way his analysis of the ordo amoris reinvokes the classic dualism of
thought and sensibility. As Ronald Perrin says, “at the very moment when [Scheler]
seemed on the verge of healing the rift between phenomenal and noumenal man, he
reinvoked the distinction between a realm of sensibility (now characterized in terms of
Pascal’s order of the heart) and a realm of thought, each unique and irreducible.”24 Not
only does this prevent him from noticing the distinctive differences, as well as the
analogies, between the non-rational modalities of value-awareness. It prevents him from

23 Tapio Puolimatka, Moral Realism and Justification, Helsinki, 1989, p. 163.

24 Ronald F. Perrin, “A Commentary on Max Scheler’s Critique of the Kantian Ethic,” in: Journal of the
History of Philosophy 12 (Aug. 1974), p. 359.
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noticing the intricate ways in which rational and various non-rational modalities of our
value-awareness are interlaced with cross-modal analogies in our experience (such as the
psychical analogy in “aesthetic sensitivity,” or the logical analogy in “legal distinctions”),
without being reducible to each other.
Thus, Hans Reiner insists that the act of value-feeling “does not consist in a feeling
that is isolated or separate from the whole of personality,” but is an integral act of the self,
in which “the sensuous and intellectual elements of the self stand in the closest possible
relation to each other and form a unity.”25 Again, according to the Dutch philosopher
Herman Dooyeweerd, no modal aspect of our experience—whether moral, psychological,
logical, etc.—is ever entirely separate from any other in experience, even if analytically
distinguishable in thought.26 And even Peter Spader allows that reason plays a valid role
in moral decisions about which nonmoral values to realize.27 It is important, then, in
short, to carefully differentiate the irreducibly distinct, though analogically related, modes
of value-awareness that are correlative to logical and various non-logical regions of
values.
As to my third thesis, since I have developed the argument for it substantially
elsewhere, I will only summarize it here, supplementing my summary with a few recent
reflections on the issue.28 Basically, I take issue with Scheler’s teleological theory that
moral values are brought into existence only as a by-product of willing the realization of
nonmoral values.29 This view I take to be compromised by the phenomenological
evidence that not every realized value of “good” appears to be a value of moral good. If
we exclude the agency of human willing for the moment, it will be clear that the coming
into existence of many bearers of positive30 nonmoral value involves the realization of a
kind of “good” that is not a moral good. For example, a badly-needed rainfall in the

25 Hans Reiner, Duty and Inclination: The Fundamentals of Morality Discussed and Redefined with Special
Regard to Kant and Schiller, trans. by Mark Santos, The Hague, 1983, p. 135.
26 Dooyeweerd, A New Critique, II, op. cit., pp. 74-78.
27 Peter H. Spader, “The Primacy of the Heart: Scheler’s Challenge to Phenomenology,” in: Philosophy
Today (Fall 1985), p. 228.
28 Philip Blosser, “Moral and Nonmoral Values: A Problem in Scheler’s Ethics,” in: Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 48, No. 1 (Sept. 1987), pp. 139-143; Scheler’s Critique of Kant’s Ethics, pp.
65-68, 84-88; “Scheler’s Theory of Values Reconsidered,” in: J.G. Hart and L. Embree, eds.,
Phenomenology of Values and Valuing, Dordrecht, 1997, pp. 155-167, esp. 161-166.
29 This characteristic of teleological ethical theories generally is noted by William K. Frankena, Ethics,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 19732, p. 17. It is important to note that, for Scheler’s theory, the realization of
moral value does not depend entirely on one’s success in actually bringing into existence the bearer of
positive nonmoral value, but, as Kant correctly insisted, on the mere attempt to do so through actually
willing it. It is also noteworthy that in his latter years, Scheler no longer regarded values as realized through
willing—an act of “spirit” (Geist)—but through the fortuitous contingencies of “impulse” (Drang). No one
in the English-speaking world has explored this shift more thoroughly than Peter Spader, “The Non-formal
Ethics of Value of Max Scheler and the Shift in His Though,” in: Philosophy Today 18, No. 3 (Fall 1974),
pp. 217-223; and “A New Look at Scheler’s Third Period,” in: Modern Schoolman 51, No. 2 (Jan. 1974),
pp. 139-158.
30 I take “positive” (as opposed to “negative”) to include also “higher” (as opposed to “lower”).
 11

farmlands helps to bring into existence a bountiful harvest, which bears the positive value
of “good.” But this “good” is obviously not a moral value, since, among other reasons, it
involves no agency of personal willing.
But even where willing is involved, it is not necessarily evident that the value that
appears “on the back” of the willed realization of a positive nonmoral value is a moral
good. For example, it is well-known how Blaise Pascal’s father, Etienne, one day
discovered his young son secretly doing geometrical calculations in the sand behind his
house—secretly, because Etienne had hidden all of his books on mathematics and
forbidden his children to dabble in mathematics, because such an exciting subject might
distract them from their other studies and prevent their normal educational development!
When young Blaise Pascal discovered the Pythagorean Theorem by himself, without any
assistance, at the tender age of eleven or so, this brought to light his mathematical genius,
and the realization of a tremendous intellectual value. But the “good” that was realized
was intellectual, not necessarily moral. In fact, if the incident involved an act of
disobedience against his father, then the positive nonmoral value of intellectual good may
have been accompanied, on some level, by the realization of a morally negative value.
This suggests two things. (1) It suggests that there are nonmoral values whose
realization results in the co-generation of nonmoral kinds of “good” (e.g., linguistic,
aesthetic, economic, or logical good, etc.), none of which it seems proper to call a
“moral” good. This applies also to the “ought.” We “ought” to cultivate good grammar,
aesthetic tastefulness, economic frugality, logically valid thinking, etc. But none of these
“oughts” is specifically moral, even if it is normative and compelling in some other,
nonmoral way. (2) It suggests that moral good is only one species of good, corresponding
to a material region of experience whose value-content can be (contra Scheler) the object
of willing and realization. This means that “moral good” does not appear necessarily
through the realization of positive nonmoral values (such as “utility,” “frugality,”
“eloquence,” “nobility,” or “holiness”), but through the realization of positive moral
values (such as “faithfulness,” “contrition,” “forgiveness,” “respect,” “honesty,”
“benevolence,” “altruism,” and the like).
A similar contention is made by Reiner, who argues that, while it is true that some
kinds of moral value arise through acts of willing directed at realizing separate objective
values (in the way claimed by Scheler), moral values are not limited to such “values of
direction” (Richtungswerte). There are also “values of bearing” (Haltungswerte), for
example, which do not arise through the realization of separate objective values but are
realized for their own sake, such as industry, perseverance, bravery, self-control,
forbearance, and patience.31
The most likely objection, at this point, is that moral value cannot be the direct
object of willing and realization in the way that nonmoral values can, because, as Scheler
points out, moral values are originally proper to acting persons, and neither persons nor

31 Reiner, Duty and Inclination, op. cit., p. 237.

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their acts can ever be given to us as objects.32 However, this does not seem quite
accurate. It is true that a bearer of value is given either as a subject or an object, and that
a subject is not given in the same respect as an object. It is also true that an acting person
is given originally as a subject, not as an object, and that a person’s intentions, feelings
and internal acts are not originally given objectively. It is also true that persons are the
only bearers of moral value who are given as subjects. Only persons are moral subjects.
Animals and plants are not. Animals are conscious subjects—sentient creatures that
possess subjective faculties of awareness of values of pleasure and pain, given in
objective bearers of these values—e.g., in food, predators, etc. They have sensible and
vital feelings. And plants are light-sensitive subjects, responding phototropically to
sunlight. But neither animals nor plants are moral subjects. They have no moral feelings
or intentions.
But it is not true that the only bearers of moral value are human subjects. Objects
can also bear moral values, even if not originally and internally as in a human subject, but
rather objectively by way of imputation. For example, a wedding ring symbolizing moral
fidelity between a husband and wife bears a moral value—not subjectively, but
objectively by way of symbolic imputation. As a subject, it is merely an inanimate band
of gold, bearing only the physical-chemical values of its composition, etc. But as an
object, it bears numerous objectively imputed values (e.g., aesthetic, economic, religious,
historical)—one of which is the moral value signifying fidelity. If inanimate objects can
bear imputed moral values, this is certainly also possible for persons. Persons can be
given not only as moral subjects or agents, but as objective bearers of value. For
example, the person who has been forgiven by another for a moral offense is one who has
been the object of forgiveness and who objectively bears the imputed moral value of
pardon.
Furthermore, even where the bearer of moral values is a human subject, there is no
reason why the moral values themselves cannot be objects of intentional awareness and
feelings. As Reiner points out, the moral values attached to the conduct of others is
readily discernible and capable of accurate phenomenological analysis; he therefore
argues against Scheler’s claim that the attempt to make moral values the direct object of
willing results necessarily in self-deception and “pharisaism.”33 Even in the case of
one’s own conduct, as Nicolai Hartmann admitted, striving after moral values in one’s
conduct is a perfectly natural and legitimate moral choice.34 Reiner also argues that

32 Scheler describes moral values as “those whose bearers can never (originally) be given as ‘objects,’
since they belong in essence to the sphere of the person (and act-being). For neither the person nor acts can
ever be given to us as ‘objects.’” (GW, II, 105-106/English: Formalism, op. cit., p. 86). Peter H. Spader
develops this argument in his article, “Aesthetics, Morals, and Max Scheler’s Non-Formal Values,” in: The
British Journal of Aesthetics 16, No. 3 (Summer 1976), pp. 231-233.
33 Reiner, Duty and Inclination, op. cit., pp. 172-173; for Scheler on “pharisaism,” see GW, II, 22/English:
Formalism, op. cit., p. 14.
34 Reiner, Duty and Inclination, op. cit., pp. 172-173. Tapio Puolimatka accepts Scheler’s remarks about
“pharisaism” only in the sense that people should not intend to appear good to themselves in a self-satisfied
 13

Scheler’s definition of moral value prevents him from recognizing the moral good
involved in acts supporting the reality of already existing values, as well as that attached
to judgments by the will.35
Scheler’s chief insight with respect to the issues raised here consists in his correct
insistence that the value of “good” as such cannot be a direct object of willed realization,
and that the content of the obligatory “ought” is realized only through the willed
realization of the bearer of a material value. But the reason why the “good” as such
cannot be directly willed is not because the direct object of willed realization must be
exclusively nonmoral, or that moral values belong only to the sphere of persons who can
never be given as “objects.” Rather, it is because the value of “good” never presents itself
as something real or realizable except as a “good” belonging to a specific material region
of value—e.g., as an aesthetic good, economic good, social good, etc. And the reason
why the content of the obligatory “ought” is realized only through the willed realization
of a bearer of material value is not because the obligatory “ought” is exclusively moral.
Rather, it is because our experience of the obligatory “ought” is always connected to a
potential or actual act of willing in which we seek to bring into existence the bearer of
material value, whether that value is moral or nonmoral. This suggests, then, that
Scheler’s phenomenology of values requires the additional categories of nonmoral values
of “good” and nonmoral obligatory “oughts,” as well as a specific material region of
moral values.
In summary, as invaluable and insightful a defense as Scheler’s “ordo amoris”
provides against reductionist impulses in intellectual history, it was not sufficiently
worked out by him so as to achieve adequate clarity. Specifically, the conception needs
to be worked out more carefully in order to achieve an adequate analysis of the
distinctions between the various subjective faculties of value-apprehension, whether the
apprehended values are emotional or logical or mathematical; and in order to achieve a
clear analysis of the objective interrelationships among both logical and nonlogical
values, and moral and nonmoral values.

sense. But he insists” “this does not mean that it is not legitimate to intend to be or become benevolent”
(Puolimatka, Moral Realism and Justification, op. cit., p. 147).
35 Reiner, Duty and Inclination, op. cit., p. 238. Reiner also notes that Scheler’s definition of moral value
keeps him from noticing that those who act from a sense of honor are concerned more with avoiding the
realization of a disvalue than with seeking the realization of a positive one (pp. 171-172).